


Answers, Questions, and a Crazy Theory

by completelyhopeless



Series: Detective Grayson and Forensic Batgirl [13]
Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Pre-Relationship, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick works with the code, dealing with distractions from Damian and his past. Barbara pursues the forensics. Their answers might lie in a crazy theory Dick and Jason came up with years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Answers, Questions, and a Crazy Theory

**Author's Note:**

> So I was rewatching "Robin's Reckoning" yesterday and I realized that what I'd thought was Zucco's alias on The Animated Series was not. I'd mistook Maroni for Marin, which is an interesting slip. I kept hearing the name Maroni on Gotham and thinking it was an amusing connection, but it was actually a mistake. I didn't feel like changing it, so I actually think I made it fit instead.

* * *

“Do you always behave according these patterns?” Damian asked, leaning over Dick's shoulder as he worked on the code. “You do not allow for your inferior body's fatigue. You should be resting. You will not break the code with your brain working at a lower capacity than usual.”

“Thank you for insulting me, kid,” Dick said, reaching over to ruffle his hair and getting a horrified yelp out of the boy.

“Do not touch me!”

“You should probably learn fast that if you're within reach, he's going to touch you,” Barbara told the boy, smiling slightly. “He lasted maybe a day with me before his whole 'I'm not going to flirt with you' and 'I don't want to get in trouble for sexual harassment' went right out the window. Now he's holding hands and stealing hugs.”

“I am not the object of Grayson's attraction,” Damian said. “You are, however unworthy you might be of that honor.”

Barbara glared at him, and Dick took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “He's just jealous. You're prettier than he is. Not to mention more my type. Come here and tell me if I am right about this pattern. If I am, I think I have the key to cracking this code.”

She leaned over his other shoulder, and he caught the scent of her shampoo, blinking as he tried to figure out the scent and why it was so familiar. He knew it, and not because she'd used it before. He knew it the same way that made him sick to his stomach and want to throw knives. “These numbers?”

“No.”

“Grayson, you appear ill.”

Barbara moved back so she could look at him. “Damian's right. You look sick. We can get you back to the couch—”

“The shampoo, Babs. It's not yours.”

“No, it isn't. I used the shower here and borrowed the stuff someone else left behind. What is it?”

“Not sure. Something about that scent makes me sick, but I don't know why.” Dick put his hands to his head, and Barbara stepped away from him. She gave his back a pat before going to the counter. “I didn't say that to make you leave.”

“I'm not gone,” she said, smiling back at him. She turned back to the computer, tapped a few keys, and then faced him again. “Walk me through the timeline, Dick. Your family came into town with the circus...”

“And my mom got sick before our big performance. They canceled it, and we stayed in a hotel while we waited for the tests to come back. That's where we were when they died. I don't remember much of that night. Only bits and pieces from the months after it.”

“When Maroni had you.”

“Yeah.” Dick closed the notebook and ignored the kid's glare when he did. He would like to work on it without the boy's commentary or even his presence because the constantly watching thing was still creepy, but he somehow kept Damian calm—much calmer than he'd managed to keep Jason—and now he was stuck with him until they could get more answers from the kid or from Dick's memories. “I don't know how I got free of him, before you ask. I... I did have nightmares for a while about him killing him to escape, but we all know I didn't do that because he's still alive.”

“For now,” Damian said, and Dick tried not to shudder at that.

Barbara swallowed, her eyes on the kid. After a moment, she let out a breath. “And then you were at your aunt's.”

“Yes.”

“Until she died.”

Dick nodded, and then he had to cover his mouth and hold down his gag reflex. “We can stop now. I know what the scent reminds me of. Her.”

“I'm sorry,” Barbara said, not returning to his side though she had a look on her face like she might have if something was different. “I didn't mean to bring up more bad memories, but I needed to clarify the time between your parents' death and—”

“And when I was found or when my aunt died?”

“Dick, please. Bruce told you—you were with Alfred. You were at the shelter for days before anyone knew your name or to look for your aunt, and she had been dead for almost a week when you led them back to her. It was not you,” Babs insisted, and he tried to smile at that, but he couldn't when his stomach was trying to upend itself over that memory. “I am not trying to find a way to connect you to any of those murders. You know there's actually more proof of your innocence in your aunt's death than you realize.”

“Can we not have this conversation?”

“If you were a coldblooded killer, your aunt's boyfriend would never have been able to kill her or hurt you. Instead, you were hospitalized and she died.”

“Maroni was not my aunt's boyfriend. She had bad taste, but not that bad. And what happened to her was almost an accident. Almost because he _did_ hit her, but she wasn't supposed to break her head on the table. I'm not—why are we even discussing this?” Dick demanded. “I don't want or _need_ to revisit these memories. I don't care if they prove that I didn't kill my aunt. I would rather not remember finding her again.”

Damian studied him. “So first your parents were killed. Then your aunt. Death follows you.”

“If you're trying to make that your nickname, it's not going to happen. Even if you follow me around like a puppy.”

“I would never. That idea is absurd.”

“And what do you call this?”

“You are very disturbed, Grayson.”

“You are not any better,” Dick muttered. He couldn't say why he thought was a good idea, but he hugged the kid anyway, holding on as Damian squirmed and cursed him in languages Dick had never heard before. “Babs, can we keep him? I promise to feed him and water him and love him—”

“Unhand me!”

Barbara giggled. “Only if you take him for walks.”

“I hate you. I will kill you for this.”

“You can't kill me. You're honor bound to save me,” Dick said, letting the boy go. Damian started smoothing his ruffled feathers while Dick and Babs watched him with amusement. “Guess this means I have another younger brother. I kind of like that idea. You know, my parents wanted a big family. It wasn't easy for them, though. We were performers. Babies got in the way of that. They'd have had to suspend performances for months because it was too dangerous. They said when I got older I could take over for my mom and...”

“Dick?”

He rose, needing air. He was going to puke. “She was joking about it that day. Told me I'd better be big enough because that might be why she was sick...”

Barbara put her hand on his back, but between that memory and her shampoo, his stomach couldn't handle it. He barely made it to the trashcan in time.

* * *

“He hasn't said anything since he threw up.”

Bruce nodded.

“He's done this before, hasn't he?” Barbara asked, though the answer was all over Bruce. The tense posture, the tight jaw. Bruce had seen this reaction from Dick before, and it unsettled him as much as it did her. “When?”

“Few times. He was actually like this when they brought him to me. Stared at the wall for the first three days.” Bruce shook his head. “I had no idea what to do with him. Didn't think I wanted to care.”

“But you do.”

“Dick's like a son to me. I'm a lousy father, but he's still my son,” Bruce said. “I haven't found any sign of Jason or Maroni yet. What happened here?”

“I think it was just too much again—the shampoo I borrowed reminded him of his aunt—”

“Never a good thing.”

“And he was telling us about his mom when he threw up, about how she'd been sick—”

“The detective on their case thought she was pregnant, but the labs disagreed. Food poisoning, they said. I never quite bought into that, though,” Bruce said, and Barbara frowned. “No, I don't think the tests were wrong—I'm glad they said she wasn't carrying another child when she died—I _do_ think she was poisoned but not by her food. I think it was deliberate. I think Maroni or the organization backing him had already chosen Dick for their future assassin by then.”

Barbara closed her eyes. Dick didn't need that idea in his head any more than he needed suspicions about his mother's pregnancy or Damian's accusation about him killing his own parents. He'd still blame himself if he thought he'd been chosen before his parents died rather than being a victim of opportunity.

“Do you have all the forensics on his parents' case yet?”

“Some of the evidence wasn't stored properly and is contaminated, but what I have analyzed so far suggests an adult male as the killer. The blood splatter, angle of entry, the bloody shoe print—no way that was a child's—those things point to an adult being their killer, but which adult is still impossible to prove. It was a hotel room, so while there were hundreds of fingerprints there that did not belong to Dick or his parents, many of them unidentifiable and there's no way to know if the killer's prints were ever left behind. I have some fibers I'm still testing but no way of knowing where they came from.”

“DNA?”

“Some from Dick and his parents, from the maid, from the other guests—another case of motels being more disgusting than you want to think about when you're staying there—but nothing that connects to Maroni or anyone else the police looked into at the time.” Barbara shook her head. “I can prove it wasn't Dick. I can't prove it was Maroni. Or anyone else.”

“There's enough on Maroni to put him away for several lifetimes for the other crimes he's committed. As much as Dick deserves closure, having Maroni behind bars might be all he gets.”

Barbara didn't want to stop there. She didn't want anyone to kill Maroni, but she wanted to prove that he had killed Dick's parents and get that justice and closure for him. “We need more answers.”

Bruce nodded. He held out a plastic bag for her to examine. “I need an analysis of this.”

“I am not your personal forensic tech.”

“This may lead us to either Jason or Maroni.”

She sighed, taking the bag. “It had better, Bruce. I am not going to get in the habit of doing your lab work—that's not my job and it's not what the city's resources are for.”

“I know.”

* * *

“Dick?”

He looked up, forcing a smile. “Hey. Sorry about earlier.”

Barbara shook her head. “Don't worry about it. If anyone has a right to lose his lunch around here, it's you after all you've been through. The problem is that you haven't had lunch.”

He nodded, and she sat down next to him, letting him rest his head on her shoulder. “This is what happens when I try to remember too much. I never get that far. Everything sets me off. Pathetic, isn't it? My mind should be capable of handling a lot more than that. My stomach, too.”

“Especially with what you eat.”

“You eat a lot of it, too,” he said. His hand brushed her side as he shifted positions. “I have no idea how you are this skinny.”

“Exercise. I don't know how you're in as good of shape as you are.”

“Ooh, you think I'm in shape? Does that mean one of these times you're going to call me Hunk Wonder?” Dick asked. “I think I'd like that, actually. Then again, I think I just like the sound of your voice. I shouldn't like it as much as I do.”

She laughed before ruffling his hair. “I think you still need a bit to recover, or I'd ask you about some of my evidence.”

“Don't I have someone to babysit?”

“Bruce took Damian with him to get food. Apparently he intends to start changing your diet as he thinks that's what set you off and not 'foolish emotional weakness,'” Barbara told Dick, who lifted his head to stare at her. She nodded. In some ways, Damian was almost cute, especially when it came to his fierce protection of Dick. In too many others, though, he wasn't. “They'll bring some back for us.”

“I'm really not hungry right now, but I'd like a few minutes without Damian breathing on my neck to finish what I was doing with that code. I'm no expert, but I'm sure I was close,” Dick said. “Sometimes it's nice just to forget what I'm doing and do a puzzle. Not that I've had a lot of time for them lately, but they were the best part of sitting around the shelter on Sunday. I swear, Alfred got extra papers just for me.”

“I think he did. He does seem to care a lot about you.”

“Alfred's a good man. He cares about everyone.”

Barbara shook her head. “It's different with you. You're special.”

“I don't know. I'm starting to think you might like me more than you say you do,” Dick teased with a grin. “In fact, if I hadn't puked not that long ago, I think I'd even try for a real kiss.”

“You know that's not what this is. I can admire someone without falling in love with them, and you know it,” she said, seeing the look in his eyes and knowing that he _was_ going to try for that real kiss first chance he got. “Enough kidding around. We have work to do.”

“I know. Code for me, forensics for you.”

“You could move, make this easier.”

He smiled. “I think I like where I am better. Not that I should. I know that there's work to be done and I don't want to leave anything for Bruce to—Oh. Damn. I know where Jason is. If I'd been thinking, I could have found him hours ago.”

“What do you mean?”

Dick sighed, lowering his head. “Jason and I had this theory about who was backing Maroni. It was never anything we could prove and half the time we didn't like it much ourselves because there were parts of it that were inspired and parts that were just stupid. It's so obvious that it can't be right and then it makes sense because it's so obvious—”

“Why don't you try and explain it, then?”

“I was getting there,” Dick said. “I guess we used up all of your patience already. Sorry. Look, this is Gotham. What has always been Gotham's biggest problem?”

“Organized crime.”

“Exactly.”

“Wait, you think the _mob_ is behind this? I know they're supposed to be involved in everything in Gotham, and they do have an international reach which could explain how Maroni was able to disappear for as long as he has and possibly even Damian's connection to this, but why would the mob want to train child assassins? They are all about family and have no shortage of people willing to kill for them.”

Dick rose. “That's part of what makes it dismissible. Stupid. At the same time, it's not. Everyone knows the members of the family. They can be traced back. A child taken in as an assassin, though—”

“They could be family and yet completely deniable,” Barbara said. There was a bit of brilliance to the idea along with its stupidity. “Did you tell anyone about that theory?”

“I think I may have mentioned it to Bruce once. Don't think it went well.” Dick shrugged. “I didn't have proof, and trying to take on the mob was part of the reason Bruce ended up kicked off the force. He didn't want me going after them, so he did his best to talk me out of it.”

“And you accepted that?”

“Not exactly.”

* * *

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

Dick forced a smile. He didn't think he could explain all of that now, and even if he wanted to, he wouldn't. Babs was already overworked and worried about him, and he couldn't blame her for the worry—he knew he wasn't in a very good state—but he also knew that he had to do this. She wouldn't let him if she knew everything.

“Maroni is also an obvious connection to the mob,” Dick said. “I'm not talking about stereotypes, either. I'm talking about him being a distant Maroni cousin. The nephew of one of the lieutenants. Or something. I forget what his actual connection is.”

“Yes, I noticed that with the name, but he's buried under so many aliases and you actually _use_ one rather than the name he was actually given at birth,” Barbara said. “He is Zucco. You just knew him as Maroni, so that's what everyone goes by.”

“It's a more fitting name for him because of what he is and what he does and who he really works for,” Dick said. He didn't know that he could think of Maroni by any other name, even if he'd been wrong about who Maroni was for years. “Have you seen—there it is.”

“What?” Barbara frowned. “Wait, since when do you have a toothbrush in my lab?”

He grinned, pulling out the travel size tube of toothpaste. “Since about our third night in together. The onion burger?”

She grimaced. “Right. I had threatened to ban you from my lab if you ever ate one again. Your breath...”

“I know,” he said, still smiling. “I brought this in the next time I came down. With all Kowlinski and the others were doing, I figured it was safer in your lab than my desk.”

“It probably was,” she agreed, folding her arms over her chest and watching him as he cleaned his teeth. “You still haven't answered my question. What did you do to track down Maroni's connection to the mob?”

“Got myself hired as a low level enforcer.”

“No, you didn't.”

He nodded. “Oh, I did. I had a very interesting childhood, and even with the Boy Wonder thing that made papers, it wasn't that hard. All you really needed was an attitude and some skill with your fists, which I had. The hardest part was keeping myself from using my circus training and giving it all away.”

She rubbed her forehead. “Interesting is not the word for your childhood. Scary might be more like it—or screwed up. That works, too.”

“I came out of it almost okay,” he said, smiling at her. “I need to go get Jason now, before he kills anyone. Or gets killed.”

She caught his arm. “Oh, no. You are not going anywhere. You can't. You're still injured. You haven't healed and the last time you went off on your own, you almost died. You are not leaving.”

“Yes, I am,” Dick told her, knowing she'd really be mad after this, but he couldn't think of a better distraction, even if he ended up getting smacked for it. He leaned in and kissed her, moving a hand to her back and holding onto her lab coat. She must have done something with her hair again because he couldn't smell the shampoo that had nauseated him before—that was very good—and all he got was her. Fine by him, she was all he wanted.

He would have gladly kept kissing her and forgotten all about things like bruised ribs and half-insane friends, but he had to get to Jason before Jason got in trouble. Again. He grabbed the notebook and reluctantly let go of her.

“I have to go,” he said, walking away from her before either of them could make him stay.


End file.
